MTOR and diabetic kidney disease: Notably, marein promotes renal autophagy in DKD by activating the PI3K/AKT pathway while inhibiting mTOR, evidenced by upregulated LC3-II/I, Beclin-1 and ATG5 with p62 degradation, thereby improving insulin sensitivity and attenuating nephropathy in db/db mice (Li et al., 2021).